55 Quotes by David Pietrusza

Jack and Bobby Kennedy were too young, too attached to real family to transfer affection and loyalty to those that of their blood or region or upbringing.

What we saw in Richard Nixon's face was the panic in his soul. – Richard Goodwin

Manners matter as this author memorably illustrates. Eleanor Roosevelt stubbornly kept her clout behind Adlai Stevenson was an almost visceral resistance to John F. Kennedy's charms as a newcomer to power. The sudden death of Eleanor's granddaughter shortly before JFK was to meet with her suggested that rapprochement was impossible. Kennedy's genuine gentle manners toward the grieving former first lady won her over and may have shifted the balance in an extremely close election.

Wednesday's glory had become Thursday's ashes.

For Jack Kennedy, who only made campaigning LOOK easy, it was, in fact, anything but.

Nixon wanted view and advice brought to him through intermediaries. He wanted information filtered as it came to him – and he wanted his filters to filter his will back to those whom he must direct.

Presidential campaign observer Teddy White on the second Kennedy-Nixon debate in which the candidates spoke from separate television studios: "It was as if, separated by comments from his adversary, Richard Nixon was more at ease and could speak directly to the nation that lay between them.

Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.